Mercury News interview: Matt Cutts, Google engineer

AUSTIN -- It was the usual standing-room-only crowd as Google's (GOOG) Matt Cutts appeared at the South By Southwest technology conference to talk about the inner workings of the world's leading search engine. Hundreds of webmasters and people in the search industry packed a giant hotel ballroom, hanging on his every word.

As a Google principal engineer, Cutts is in charge of fighting "spam" attacks by websites trying to dishonestly boost their ranking on Google. Cutts has been fighting spam since 2001 and became head of Google's webspam group in 2004. He wrote the first version of SafeSearch, Google's adult content filter, which blocked porn spammers from getting unsuspecting Google users to click on pornography sites.

A Kentuckian whose amiable personality belies his rock star-like status among Web geeks, Cutts is the most visible face of Google for legions of webmasters. He became even more prominent this winter, when he was at the center of charges by Google that Microsoft's Bing search engine "copied" Google's results. (Microsoft denied "copying," but acknowledged it had used some Google results as a signal to filter results.)

Then, in March, Cutts was at the center of Google's decision to revamp its search algorithm to penalize "content farms," websites that focus on getting high search rankings to lure traffic that produces ad revenue but offer low-quality information. A loud chorus of critics said content farms were degrading Google's value, by overwhelming higher-quality sites.

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Cutts sat down for a conversation with the Mercury News at South By Southwest. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q Search has been in the news recently. What's your take-away from all the attention?

A I think one big take-away is that search is vital. Sometimes people are so used to Google just working that they forget about all the rocket science that goes on under the hood to return good search results. So on one hand while we always want to be good enough that people don't need to criticize, it's actually kind of a good sign if people are criticizing Google, because that means they care, and they genuinely want to tell us how to improve. We have to have the approach that we're open to feedback, that we can improve, that there are things we can do better. So I really appreciate all the interest in search over the past couple of months, because ultimately, that is going to make things better for users.

Q How well is the new algorithm working, in Google's view?

A This change was designed to surface higher-quality content. We've heard from many publishers who are grateful, because their traffic has gone up after this most recent algorithmic update. I got an email from a user, and she said, "A couple months ago, I was searching for information about pediatric multiple sclerosis, and previously, low-quality sites were ranking above government sites." And she said, "I searched recently, and the government sites were ranking first." And that's the kind of feedback we like to hear from our users, and we've been hearing very positive feedback.

Q Do you feel like you're in an arms race with your adversaries?

A The spam attacks have definitely gotten more sophisticated. Our first instinct is to try to solve a problem algorithmically, and if you can go to the root and write a new algorithm to solve a problem, that tends to work really, really well. What's interesting is to see how many spammers now will not attack the Web so much, as people. People who haven't kept their websites up to date can be hacked, and then their websites can be used in service of spam. So while we do make good progress and we've managed to shut down entirely different types of spam by writing great algorithms, it's interesting to see how the weakest link in many cases can remain fooling an individual person.

Q How has the evolution of the Web made your job tougher?

A One big change is that the Web has become more real-time, faster. When an event happens, whether it's the earthquake in Japan, or a shooting, or any piece of breaking news, people want to know about that. And trying to tease out who are the reputable sources, and the reputable information in those sorts of situations, is always difficult. My job, trying to prevent spammers, means that people try to create fake personas or latch onto breaking events and hot news (to promote their search ranking), and the challenge is trying to sort through that and return the best results, without the people who are being deceptive or manipulative or otherwise trying to hurt the user experience.

Q I sensed there was some real anger on your part when Google accused Microsoft of copying.

A Hmm. (Long pause.) Search is a fantastic place to work and I've really enjoyed working on it for the past 11-plus years now. I think the Web benefits when search engines have distinctive, different philosophical voices. So I think it can be a bit of a disservice to users if clicks on Google search results are used in Bing rankings.

Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.

Matt Cutts

Age: 38

Hometown: Morehead, Ky.

Education: University of Kentucky, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Employment: Google engineer since 2000

Family: Married, no children

5 Things about Matt Cutts

1. Eloped and got married at a courthouse. Then quit his Ph.D. program to join Google.

2. Has recorded more than 300 videos for webmasters on YouTube.

3. Enjoys trying new challenges every 30 days and hopes to run a marathon this year.

4. Has two cats named Emmy and Oz.

5. Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last year to raise money for clean, safe drinking water in developing nations.